Witches’ butter, golden spindles, bell-shaped mottlegill: the multiple identities of the prose poem

Abstract

This paper explores the challenge of ineffability, with a focus on prose poetry. It considers the strengths of the prose poem in offering a semantic or communicative means (Spackman 2012) of drawing closer to the unsayable, and situates this exploration in the wider context of apophasis, a centuries-old rhetorical device developed to deal, in language, with what lies beyond language. Investigating the nature and identity of prose poetry, the paper examines a prose poem by Yusef Komunyakaa, discussing its efficacy in relation to an apophatic approach to technique and form. Adopting a creative voice, and weaving prose poetry throughout the discussion, this paper also endeavours to show the overlap of creative process and practice within a research context, executed through the combination of form, idea, reflection and enquiry. In offering an amalgam of prose and poetry, the critical and the creative, this paper is not only reflecting on the situated experience of apophasis with regard to prose poetry, but also actively employing it.